The 33-year-old “Runaway” MC – who was recently in Australia to launch his first film project – says the 2007 death of his beloved mother, Dr. Donda West, left him struggling to cope. 

“There were times that I contemplated suicide,” he confessed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres earlier this week, when asked about the time spent away from the spotlight following Donda’s death. “[But] I will not give up on life again. There’s so many people that will never get the chance to have their voice heard. I do it for them.”

“I stopped doing music all together,” West continued, of his dark period. “It was the first time that I got to stop since my mum had passed. I had never stopped and never tried to even soak in what all had happened. It was time to take a break and develop more as a person as a creator and focus more on my thoughts and my ideas and what I wanted to bring to the world.”

West also revealed that since his mother’s death, he’s lost three other “parental figures” – and now says the grief from those losses has helped make him a stronger person. “Everything has been taken away from me. I’m so not ... scared,” West insisted. “I so don’t care.”

With guests such as Bon Iver, RZA, Q-Tip and Pete Rock on the new disc, West’s latest longplayer is titled My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It was recorded in West’s own home studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and will be released on Monday 22 November.